Today’s Omer theme is beautiful harmonious balance in humility and grace. (See below for more on the Omer)

Before and after meditating today, I read chapter 58 from the The Lao Tzu (See below for full text)

There is a fine balance in ruling over ourselves internally, spiritually, and bringing our governing ideas into the world so that our spirit can be made real.

I find the Tao inspirational in this regard, asking us to follow the sage in honing our best attributes and not overextending them.

Balance requires restraint, even when we have done the work and think we it might be our time to shine.

In Judaism, one of the central ideas on this topic is summed up in the Hebrew term, tzimtzum, or self-reduction. Creation is facilitated not by over-attention, but by a combination of caring and restraint, action and inaction.

We are working on this right now in our yard. We recently planted apple trees and berry bushes and I am so tempted to over-water and over-attend to them, which might crowd out the plants’ own abilities to grow and take hold on their own.

Real growth happens when we find that subtle balance between attention and inattention.

[From The Lao Tzu (Tao-Te Ching) as found in Wing-Tsit Chan (translator and compiler), A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, (1963), page 167, slightly adapted by Jonathan Freirich]

58.
When the government is non-discriminative and dull,
The people are contented and generous.
When the government is searching and discriminative,
The people are disappointed and contentious.
Calamity is that upon which happiness depends;
Happiness is that in which calamity is latent.
Who knows when the limit will be reached?
Is there no correctness (used to govern the world?)
Then the correct again becomes the perverse
And the good will again become evil.
The people have been deluded for a long time.
Therefore the sage is as pointed as a square but does not pierce.
They are as acute as a knife but do not cut.
They are as straight as an unbent line but do not extend.
They are as bright as light but do not dazzle.

About the Counting of the Omer in the Jewish holiday cycle:Today is thirty-one days, which is four weeks and three days of the Counting of the Omer - a time when many Jews note each day between the Second Day of Passover, the celebration of freedom, and the next major holiday, Shavuot, or “weeks”, when Jews celebrate the covenant given at Mount Sinai. Each of the seven weeks and each of the seven days in these weeks correspond to a particular “sefirah” or “sphere”, or perhaps better, “a divine emanation/human aspiration”. These themes allow us to reflect on the days as we move from liberation to revelation in the Jewish calendar.

Today’s Omer theme is beautiful harmonious balance (“tiferet” תֵפְאֶרֶת) in the week of humility and grace (“hod” הוֹד).